Sunday, November 15, 2009

BWOF 11-2009-112 Crash and Burn


BWOF 11-2009-112 is officially a wadder.
I adjusted the skirt (by removing 24" of width) and stitched it to the bodice and tried it on for a preliminary look. It was awful.
The satin really was a bad choice for the lining. The skirt was just way too bulky and made me look at least 15 pounds heavier (and dowdier) than I really am.
The thought did cross my mind to take it apart and try using two layers of the chiffon for the skirt, but that would have been a lot of work, and quite frankly, the bodice didn't look good enough to make me want to go to all that trouble.
The narrow cut of the shoulders combined with the ruffles made my shoulders look narrow, and that combined with the bulky skirt was not a good look. (Imagine a pyramid!) The bodice gaped, and even though I planned all along to wear this with a cami, the striped fabric caused a crazy optical illusion that made my boobs look saggy and unnaturally placed all at the same time.
And the color did nothing for me. With my hair color and skin tone, this fabric just did me no favors.
So all things considered, I decided to just stop work on this and move on. I felt bad for a day or two. After all, I don't like to admit defeat, I hate wadders, and I used a lot of fabric on this stupid dress. But then again, the fabric wasn't flattering and it wasn't going to look good on me no matter what I made out of it, so it's better to just have it out of here, right?
I thought about posting a pic of me in the dress just to show that it's really the right decision to quit (and so maybe someone else can learn from my sorry experience) but it's raining outside so I can't take photos at the moment. And quite frankly, I'm not up to embarrassing myself. Take my word for it- it looks bad.
The best thing to do in a situation like this is to just jump right back on the horse, so to speak, and start a new project. I'm thinking about NL 6909. With my age and body type, simple, body skimming styles seem to work the best for me. I really like the version on the model in the photo. I even have a cute pinstripe fabric in my stash waiting to become something fabulous. I'll need to make a muslin to test out the stand-up collar. I think that's the cutest part of the dress, but I don't know how flattering it will be.
I'm off to dig around for some muslin fabric.

4 comments:

Marybeth said...

That's too bad :((( I think the new dress you're planning to make will be really pretty - can't wait to see it!

Kyle said...

Sorry it didn't work out, it's so frustrating when that happens. Are you going to review it on SPR? I've always imagined of SPR'ing one of my wadders and the accompanying picture would look somewhat like yours. :)

marybee said...

i just love seeing and reading about your projects! sorry about the wadder (love that term!!). the NL dress looks really cute.

Mary Nanna said...

What a shame! There was a lot of sewing in that dress and it had great potential. The Newlook pattern looks like a dead cert to me though - quick, fitted and fun.